Components of Pre-Writing

Pre-writing is low intensity and often serendipitous, dependent on thoughts flowing into you rather than you putting thoughts out. Here is a nonexclusive list of things that can be realistically counted as pre-writing.

Ideation (Deciding the menu)#

Literally, what are possible things you could be writing about? Raw Idea Velocity is the focus here - remember you’re not signing up to actually deliver the thing - but if you have a flash of inspiration or insight sometime somewhere, write it down. It’s not uncommon for me to watch a good talk and come out of it with two ideas of things to write about.

• If you feel like you lack ideas for things to write about, your bar is too high. Even if it’s been definitively explained elsewhere, you can still get value from learning in public by explaining in your own words to others who think like you.
• If you have too MANY ideas-- I can sometimes relate-- consider what people want. You’ll want to take note of what people are interested in, or just ask them what they want.

Research (Finding recipes)#

This includes links, facts, quotes, stories, demos, repos, tweets, talks, podcasts, timelines, histories, taxonomies. Your research journey starts immediately after the idea. When you get the idea flash, definitely note down its origin. This is research. This is the “meat” of many genres of blog posts-- concrete pieces of information that readers can take away. Can you imagine doing comprehensive research just before you write? You might never end up writing! You’re collecting all the stuff you’re going to use to write in the future, except you’re doing it as you come across it.

Peer review (Taste test with staff)#

The research will be a lot easier and faster with peer review. This is an advantage of having a network-- a small group of people who know more than you, that you can tap on to get more research direction and to get a feel of immediate objections to address.

Audience testing (Trial run with potential diners)#

This is a little wider net than peer review. Instead of consulting people who know more than you; you’re now testing the messaging on the people you’re writing this for. This is an extra step I rarely do for my blog posts, but I’ll do this when chatting with developers in conferences and meetups to gauge reaction for example.

Broadway shows have the concept of workshopping in a smaller audience, with the understanding that everything from plot to props to cast can be changed based on feedback before the show actually launches live. For more highly produced pieces of content, like talks, workshops, or books, this is worth investing in so that you have the impact you hope for.

Reframing (Renaming or improvising the dish)#

The initial idea might not be what you actually end up writing. Whether it is due to audience feedback or delayed inspiration, you might find a more interesting angle to approach the topic or find a better analogy. It’s cheaper to pivot the entire focus of your writing when you haven’t written it yet. To illustrate, this chapter was originally titled “How and Why I Write”-- good, but not as interesting or memorable. I found a better framing and reframed it.

Organization (Presenting the dish)#

Deciding on a structure for your article sets it apart from a stream-of-consciousness rant. It lets people zoom in and out of their thoughts by skimming or diving in as needed. If you really need to deliver a message, use the tell them what you will tell them, tell them, and tell them what you just told them metastructure, that highlights the structure itself. I don’t always do this because it can feel repetitive, but structure choice is important. See, for example, that I’ve brought you along with this list in a roughly chronological order.

Illustration (Taking a photo for the menu/website)#

A picture speaks a thousand words. Think about how you can give the reader a visual reference for what you will describe; as a bonus, this makes your thesis a lot more shareable. Some things might be harder to illustrate - Maggie Appleton has great ideas on how to illustrate the invisible. Mental imagery also works. You’ll notice I don’t use many visuals here, but I am invoking a cooking analogy that you already have entrenched in your head.

As you can see, there’s a lot that you can do to improve your writing before you write. We should have a separate workflow for pre-writing than we do for writing.